SOURCE: “Female Essence,” in New Statesman & Society, Vol. 3, No. 113, August 10, 1990, p. 38.

In the following review, Porter offers a positive assessment of Soviet Women.

Francine du Plessix Gray's maternal Russian origins have given her a lifelong fascination with Russian women, and, during the winter of 1988, she embarked on a month-long journey of self-discovery, travelling around the Soviet Union to compile the interviews for [Soviet Women: Walking the Tightrope].

In the country that pioneered legal abortions, active childbirth techniques and sexual revolution, Soviet scholars are now beginning for the first time since the 1920s to research patterns of gender difference. So what are we to make of the female obstetrician who tells the author that women don't want to see their husbands during and after childbirth because “they don't have their make-up with them”? Or the sexologist who says that women are brought up to think sexual pleasure is “not...